JJogurt

A single 4-lane road starting from the highway works well. Then I'll zone residential at the far end of the road, industry near the highway, and commercial in the middle. Everything else comes as your city develops and you get more money.

You are semi-wrong =) From my experience fulfilling the transportation requirement for offices isn't just about spamming bus stops nearby, but about effectiveness of your transport system. Your network needs to make sense and it needs to be able to take you to as many destinations as possible. In other words, office wants to be near you transportation hub, and putting a train station nearby helps. And besides, train stations produce a ton of sound pollution. I makes sense to place them near your commercial/office zones. Also, offices don't exactly employ fewer people than others. Level 3 office employs the most people per square in the game. A 4x4 Lvl 3 industry building employs 32 people while its office equivalent employs 48. The thing is that Lvl 1 office starts with few employees, but then gains much more with each level up.

It has the biggest effect on industry I would say. Industry will level up immediately once you build a freight station near them.

Can someone explain this further please? What effects wealth? What happens if I have lots of highly educated people working on farms for example? Will their wealth be low despite their education? Will they live in lower level houses?

I tend to redevelop, but slowly to avoid "shock". The first places to get high density are high land values ones.

Level 3 industry could pass as high tech. It employs highly educated people and looks kinda futuristic. It still pollutes though.

Here's a nice article about transportation in case some of you haven't seen it: http://www.cimexchange.com/page/index.html/_/articles/exclusive-csl-inner-city-transport-r124 The more I learn about this game the better it gets. Unfortunately I won't be buying it right away because I'm not sure how my well over 5 years old PC will run it.

They said in the AMA that terraforming will be possible in the external map editor.

I don't think you know Paradox well enough. Their games are anything but casual. Their "map painting" games have enormous learning curve and attract very specific audience. Then there's Cities in Motion which is a subganre of a subganre. I think Paradox is making this game with avereage Simtropolis-goer in mind.

I'm impressed. This does look promising. The only fear I have is milking players through DLC's. Another Paradox game, Crusader Kings 2, in notorious for this.

If you check the requirements for University you'll see that you need to have School Grade of at least 95. This is not E.Q. I assume it's a measurement of how well funded your schools are, with a value of 100 meaning that all your schools are adequately funded. Unfortunately, there's no way of checking your School Grade in game. Same thing with the "Number of good Public Libraries" requirement for the Main Library. In this case "good" means that they should be adequately funded.

School grade =/= E.Q. School grade is determined by your education funding. You should check if any of your schools are over capacity.

I think our friend is making a common beginners mistake. He's confusing density and wealth.

If you're looking for a simple building pack I suggest you check out some of the madhatter106's submissions. He made a some nice that can really brighten up your downtown areas. EDIT: Damn, I see Compdude787 already suggested the same.